By Andrew Muir, Founder of Momatu
Alarming statistics show that more than 80% of children have an online presence before the age of two, and the average child has almost 1,500 images of them posted online before their fifth birthday โโ yikes!
While social media is a wonderful way to share your childโs special moments with friends and family, many parents forget that these people wonโt necessarily be the only ones who are privy to them. For this reason, itโs no wonder that experts are increasingly cautioning parents against โsharentingโ, a term to describe parents who incessantly share posts and photos of their children to social media.
A recent report by OFCOM in the UK found that while many parents do share images of their children online, 56% of parents donโt. Of these non-sharers, 87% said they actively chose not to in order to protect their childโs privacy. In addition to privacy, common concerns of parents that were cited in the report were the risk of images they posted being used in a sexual nature, or for the purpose of stalking and even kidnapping.
It goes without saying that most people have good intentions when sharing images of their children online. And letโs face it, we all want to celebrate and share our childrenโs proudest and more precious moments with those closest to us. What we need to keep in mind though is that sharing these on social media means that the hundreds of โfriendsโ (and their friends, and friends of friends) that weโve accumulated over the years are also often able to view them.
This is not to say that people should stop posting photos of their kids altogether, but rather that they should be aware of the risks in doing so, and take any reasonable step they can to ensure they are protecting their childrenโs privacy online.
Ways to keep your child safe when sharing online
Be Aware of Your Privacy Settings
Most social media platforms offer custom privacy settings. For any albums or images that include photos of your children, set the privacy setting controls to custom, which allows you to choose the people that can see your photos. At a minimum, always make sure these settings are set to โfriendsโ and not โfriends of friendsโ or โpublicโ.
Itโs also worth checking regularly that your social media accounts are set to private as app updates and software changes can alter your settings.
Turn off Geolocation Tagging
Itโs easy to forget that social media posts often provide indicators that enable viewers to easily identify your location. Platforms including Instagram and Facebook are required by law to ask if youโd like them to use your current location; however if youโre ever prompted with this question and youโre posting a photo of your child, select โnoโ.
Further to this, if revealing your location is a concern, itโs best to avoid posting photos with telling landmarks or identifiable features such as restaurant names in the background.
Lower Your Resolution
Believe it or not, people often pull images of kids from the internet to use in advertising material. By lowering the resolution of the photos youโre posting online, theyโre less likely to be able to print or enlarge the images.
Use a Private Photo Sharing App
There are a number of private photo sharing apps that parents can use to keep track of and share their childโs most important memories in a fun and safe way.
Momatu is just one example. Itโs a new free private social media platform that was created with the expressed purpose to provide parents with a place to connect, and share their childrenโs most precious moments, with only those closest to them.
Users of the app can capture, sort and co-create their familyโs history into beautiful timelines that can be shared and enjoyed by only the people theyโve invited. And this way parents can post to their heartโs content, and rest assured that they know exactly who is viewing their photos.
Momatu provides parents with their own private space to connect, and share their childโs most precious memories with only those closest to them. Itโs a digital timeline app that allows parents to capture and sort their little oneโs milestones and moments into sophisticated timelines that can be viewed and interacted with by only those they have invited. Momatu also allows users to design and print their timelines into beautiful, hard-copy photobooks that can be kept and enjoyed for years to come.